Boot camp shows value of picking through documents

Lori Price

By Lori Price
Suburban Education Reporter
The Dallas Morning News

Posted: May 13, 2003

Related article: Invaluable public documents

Journalists can be so picky.

We want to pick the stories we write.

We pick the words we want to use. We pick the people we interview for stories.

Pick, pick, pick.

Well, I've always been picky -- especially when it comes to things that scare me about work. I often choose not to take on certain assignments. I don't think I need to do them. At least that’s what my mouth says.

My mind and even my soul tell me I sidestep some stories because I'm scared -- afraid that little ol' me can't live up to the challenge. So I often decide that I don't need to know more than a little about some reporting skills such as computer-assisted reporting, narrative writing and civic journalism.

Deep down, however, I not only want to learn more about these things, I want to learn to do them well.

I got the boost I needed to stop being so picky, so to speak, at the American Press Institute’s Writers' Boot Camp, an intense three-day program that takes writers from the beginning of the writing and reporting process to the end.

What did I learn? Lots of ideas for finding good stories, bags of tips on how to improve. But I also left with surprises.

I read the line-up of speakers and saw Brant Houston of the Investigative Reporters and Editors group and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.

"Not for me," I thought. "I'm not an investigative reporter. Don't need it. Don't have time to use it."

Wrong, wrong, dirty and wrong!

Houston's talk was inspiring. He included a list of 22 public documents we all should have in database form at our fingertips -- something that proved incredibly useful for me as an education reporter. From the list alone, I came up with a bunch of story ideas that I hope to write for my newspaper.

I share the list with you. It’s a gold mine from my three days of learning the true meaning of picky.

Lori Price was a 1992 Scholar at The Modesto (Calif.) Bee. Reach her at lprice@dallasnews.com.

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